1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices for improving the cooking characteristics and usefulness of barbecues and in particular to plates or baffles incorporated between the heat source and grill of a barbecue.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The heat source of a traditional barbecue is a coal bed, which produces a broad, even heat beneath the grill. This heat further includes the vapors of food-liquids burning on the heat source. Solutions for simulating these cooking characteristics in a gas burning barbecue, have included various devices which operate between the gas burner and the grill. Typically these devices more evenly disperse convective heat from the burner, and provide a hot substrate to catch and evaporate the food-liquids dripping from the grill.
The most conventional solution known in the art is the provision of a bed of porous lava rocks beneath the grill which are heated above the gas burners. While the rock is effective in distributing heat from the burner, it must be very porous to avoid explosion, and therefore tends to soak up volatile liquids from the cooking food, ignite, and burn the food. Further, the bed of lava rocks shares some of the disadvantages in regard to mess and storage with traditional coal burning barbecues.
An alternative solution is disclosed by Miller, U.S. Pat. No. 4,403,597 filed Sep. 13, 1983. Miller's so-called heat transfer device replaces the bed of lava rocks with a rough, perforated, metal plate. Miller discloses prevention of "flame up" as a primary objective of his heat conductive plate. The plate perforations are designed to let the juices drop through, to avoid accumulation of a major portion of the food liquids. This means that the food liquids would be landing on the burner orifices and accumulating in the bottom of the barbecue shell, which is clearly problematic.
The coal burning or gas burning barbecues considered in their entirety exhibit an additional problem. It is often taken for granted in the art, that the barbecue is an accessory cooking appliance with additional cooking appliances ready at hand. However, barbecues are often used in remote cooking applications such as outdoors, camping, or boating, where a range or oven may in fact not be at hand. In this situation, the need to boil water, heat coffee or stew, or pan fry food is nearly impossible or at best very fuel inefficient on a barbecue where the heat is designed to be dispersed and "barbecue-like".
Therefore the need is anticipated for a novel device which can be used between the grill and heat source of a barbecue, to adequately distribute heat beneath the grill, control and vaporize food liquids falling through the grill, and further allow manipulation of the heat source to convert between a broadly distributed barbecue heat and a specific range-type heat to make the barbecue more versatile.